New Study Officially Links GOP Success To Racism

A new study by economists Ilyana Kuziemko and Ebonya Washington shows that white residents of towns that had larger enslaved populations in the antebellum south are more likely to vote Republican. The study demonstrated that while conservative views alone could not account for the mass defection from Democrat to Republican that occurred after the civil-rights movement, conservative views on race specifically were correlated.

A related study by psychologists at the University of California, Los Angeles, also reveals links to people’s prejudice, as it relates to the location in which they were raised:

Blackwell, one of the authors, agreed. “People in general tend to think of their views as their own, conclusions that they came to after thinking long and hard about the facts,” he said. “There’s sufficient evidence out there to show that’s not the way people have come to form beliefs about the world and about politics, in general.”

The new study does not provide direct evidence that those white Southerners are more likely to vote Republican because Republican politicians appeal to their racial anxieties. Rather, it suggests that racial biases along with political beliefs are transmitted from one generation to another as part of the overall culture of a particular place. (via The Washington Post)